Academic libraries routinely struggle to afford access to expensive journals, and patrons may not be able to obtain every scholarly paper they need. Is Open Access (OA) the answer? In this ALA Editions Special Report, Crawford helps readers understand what OA is (and isn’t), as he concisely

Analyzes the factors that have brought us to the current state of breakdown, including the skyrocketing costs of science, technology, engineering, and medicine (STEM) journals; consolidation of publishers and diminishing price competition; and shrinking library budgets

Summarizes the benefits and drawbacks of different OA models, such as “Green,” “Gold,” Gratis,” “Libre,” and various hybrid forms

Discusses ways to retain peer-review, and methods for managing OA in the library, including making OA scholarly publishing available to the general public

Addressing the subject from the library perspective while taking a realistic view of corporate interests, Crawford presents a coherent review of what Open Access is today and what it may become.

I believe this book fills a need–not only in the library community but beyond. It’s a reasonably fast read but also a set of resources for further use.

Dorothea Salo, Peter Suber and Charles W. Bailey, Jr., all deserve credit for reading the draft version, offering honest suggestions and criticism and leading to a much better final version. Dorothea in particular was usefully frank, as I’d expect.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 4th, 2011 at 8:14 am and is filed under Books and publishing.
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3 Responses to “Coming in March: Open Access: What You Need to Know Now”

It’s designed as a concise overview of what’s important about OA, issues, controversies–and ways to find out more about it. I think it’s appropriate for business researchers, yes. (I’m biased, of course: I wrote it.) I think it’s appropriate for scientists and researchers, even though it’s less likely to reach them.